Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Books that affect you.

Shebah, Kav and I have all read a book called, 'We need to Talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver and been moved to tears/shock by its reading. I'm currently reading 'The Lucifer Effect' and it's giving me nightmares and making me question humanity and my own place in the loop. A fortnight ago I read 'For One More Day' by Mitch Albom and I cried too. I tried not to, but the sniffles escaped nonetheless.(I do like crying over stuff it has to be said, especially if something is poignant, I have no weapons or shields against poignancy, none)But it made me wonder. In a world soaked with visceral images, with immediate information, with blanket coverage of every horror imaginable, only books still have that power over me. I suppose it is because you become invested in a book. They take time to read, they hold you up. You need to slow down to read, you need to digest what is before you, to think on it. You can re-read a book and get a different perspective than the first reading, they can blindside you when you least expect it. With the recent death of Kurt Vonnegut the interweb has been flooded with nostalgia, normal toughie bloggers have spoken wistfully of reading Slaughterhouse Five and The Cat's Cradle. Ask any reader about a book they read in their youth and they get that look, that faraway gaze when days were ephemeral and the summers always hot. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Silver Brumby books all mean something to us now. I remember reading Beat of the City when I was ten or eleven and just being blown away. I wanted to be there, I wanted to be in that life. I lay in my hideout with the dog and I wasn't there at all, I was in a hot town in Australia, clicking my fingers, wearing a purple shift and too big shoes and being too cool for school( as a matter of fact I got that book last year, original copy, read it again and was still impressed) I would like to know what is is that moves us to bittersweet memories, or disturbed sleep, laughter or tears. Or maybe I don't, maybe I want to carry on, loving the shit out of reading, transporting myself from this plain to where ever the next page takes me.Well? Books that made you feel, have at it.I'll go first, 1-We need to talk about Kevin (Lionel Shriver)-tears2-The Lucifer Effect (Philip Zimbardo)-despair/nightmares3-The Throwaway (Tom Sharpe)- helpless ridiculous laughter. 4-It (Stephan King) Fear/ revulsion.There is one image in the book I still get the colliwobbles over.5-The Wonder Boys (Michael Chambon)- sheer rainy-day, sprawled in front of an open fire with buttery soldiers of toast sort of bliss.6-The choirboys (Joseph Wambuagh) -all of the above.7-Beat of the City (HF Brinsmead)-nostalgia.8-The Rum Diaries (Hunter S Thompson)- Urge to get up and go somewhere with nothing more than a suitcase.Also urge to eat hamburgers.9-Fear of Flying (Erica Jong)- Sexual awakening and belly laughing.10 World According to Garp (John Irving) -Eye-opener and glimpse into the lives of others, tears too.

I've never cried at a book although if someone wrote a book about a pack of dolphins searching for a lost baby dolphin who was the saviour of all dolphins and after a long struggle against whales, sharks, stingrays and killer shrimp they find their way to the promised land only to be slaughtered, en masse, right at the last minute by a pack of Japanese fishermen I think I'd cry.

Speaking of Banville. When I read The untouchable I spoke with rather a clipped accent for weeks after and said, 'pass the gin old boy' and 'stands to reason' a lot. Had I a pipe I would have tapped the dottle against the fireplace too.

Very often it's not the really worthy excellent literature like Grapes of Wrath that stands out in my memory - some quite ordinary but well written books can have quite an effect with just one chapter that sticks in my memory forever.

Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami - gut wrenching.

The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd - for just one chapter that is such a tear jerker that I re-read it sometimes.

After You'd Gone - Maggie Farrell bawled like a baby reading this one.

A big favourite that I re-read again and again is The Great Gatsby. As you said, FMC, it's the ones that transport you that make an impression.

I howled with laughter at the Just William books when I was a kid, but when I tried to read them as an adult they left me cold.

Catch-22. Hilariously funny with splashes of pure horror thrown in. I still can't get the chaplain's walk through Rome out of my head.

In contract to Twenty, I loved The Sea. I'm a sucker for anyone being pretentiously prosey and Banville does it better than most. I was quite happy with the maudlin aspect as I'm such a miserable bastard.

Is it cliched to say that The Life Of Pi made me feel good?

Both of Peter O'Toole's autobiographies made me enormously happy and I spoke with a RADA accent for ages afterwards. I'm desperately hoping that he knocks out another volume soon.

Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance made me want to buy a motorbike and take a road trip (only last year, truth be told). I eventually figured that biking to Galway probably wasn't epic enough though.

Which part of It was it, FMC? Was it the plughole? I still think of that occassionally when brushing my teeth, despite having read it fifteen years or more ago.

The illustrated dictionary of human skin diseases was a favourite of mine, a tear would come to my eye as I gazed at a pus filled scrotum, or a pubic mound with ingrown hairs, or an eyelid splitting with excema. Actually, everyone who ever touched that book would cry. Pity someone nicked it.

We Need To Talk About Kevin - left me more nauseated and disturbed than it made me cry. Had to finish it but didnt want to.

John Banville The Sea - agree with Twenty on that one. I get pissed off when I have to go to Dictionary.com more than five times to get through a book. "Cinereal", for God's sake. Means pertaining to the grey matter. I studied anatomy and I still never came across that one. "Losel" - medieval peasant or fool or something. Neither word in the dashboard widget dictionary, by the way. And neither will ever be useful to me again - outside the context of this post. I am all for finding the perfect word but this is just oneupmanship. By the way, see my comment on Kav's blog about Awkward Conversations 4 for when I drunkenly fawned over Banville in person...addressing him as "Mr. McGahern". And

The End of the Affair by Graham Green - always makes me bawl - not the movie, the book. Book much better.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, and an essay he wrote called My Father's Brain, published in a collection of his writing called How To Be Alone.

The poem Prayer by Carol Anne Duffy.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayerutters itself. So, a woman will lifther head from the sieve of her hands and stareat the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truthenters our hearts, that small familiar pain;then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youthin the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scalesconsole the lodger looking out acrossa Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone callsa child's name as though they named their loss.

TM would cry about that dolphin book because that's the one he's trying to write.and another thing major, "3 - I'd rather bite off the top of a dog's cock and chew it all day long than read another page."one of Will Self's unless I'm much mistaken.

Sorry Cat, the Duchess of Devonshire is staying with us just now and she's getting on my tits.Look, sorry Major.I can't remember crying at a book but I nearly did at Philip Pullman's dark materials thing, at the end where the two kids are kissing goodbye before they seperate forever.

Glinda, you're probably new here so I'm gonna forgive you just this one time. But the only poems I like are The Raven and McCavity the Mystery Cat. All else are right up there with Jazz , which I also hate. I too loved The end of the affair and I profess I also felt a bit sad while reading The Hours. I liked Brideshead Revisited and once more my accent was deeply faux and clipped and full of 'I say' for weeks afterwards.

Docky! You're alive, I though perhaps you'd lost your broad band again. Folk staying with you eh? I'm against the sort of thing.

EEE Kav, there's a scene in Firestarter where the husband comes home and finds his wife dead with all her finger nails ripped out. I was bleeeee-ed out for days after that one, it was the way he described it.

As opposed to what? Vampires taking over a small American Town? A young girl burning a school to the ground using her mind and her dirty pillows? Grown men who lay down the weapons and kick box their way out of trouble? Monkey Islands? What?

No, I'm completely talentless. I did lessons for two years then gave it up when I moved away. Though it did really sharpen my ear and teach me to appreciate other people's playing, which is what I really wanted to gain from it anyway... so yeah big thanks to Vikram Seth...

I never read Watership Down, but I watched the cartoon as a child and when Bright Eyes played for hazel I wept. Really, wept broken heartedly. Gamma at one point suggested I shouldn't be allowed watch stuff like that, I was hysterical.

Oh I really like Lovely Bones too, an ther's anothe wonderful book called a Good House which really spoke to me too.Has anyone read a book called Geek Love, it's by Katherine Dunne? It's an amazing book, really really terrific. It's one of my favourites but I never thought to put it on the list.

The Curious Incident of the dog......was great stuff as was The Cement Garden for a slightly macabre read. (Maybe Footeater wrote this!). So many great books, so little time! I now have another whole list of potential reads from your comments box, FMC, I'll need to live to be 280 to catch up.

Haven't read it, I'm ashamed to say - have only read Cakes & Ale. It sounds right up my street, though. On looking through some of my favourites, I see there are quite a few with an oriental slant! Not a deliberate choice; but I confess I love the Far East, especially Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, both for food and hols. (And I am currently working with a Chinese company - pure coincidence - I think!!!)

I've read Geek Love. I was blown away. I hadn't read anything like it before but it cast a freaky spell.

Many many books have made me feel but when i was wee I just couldn't finish Greyfriar's Bobby. I wept and wept and bawled and howled at brave, loyal, dumb little Bobby, and the thing was torture for me.

I read We Need To Talk About Kevin about a year ago-ish. It disturbed me no end. Chilling, it was.

Geek Love is a strange book our Sam, but it's bloody brilliant and very touchin and full of strange quirky meanings, it lena shard on tolerance and the rips the rug right out from under your (webbed) feet.Not 'your' webbed feet, erm, you know what I mean.

Broca's Brain by Carl Sagan. I doubt if many will know it. In the main, it shaped my path through adolescent reservations about a religion forced on me. It also gave me a love of science and learning. It led me to many other books - Sagan wrote on the philosophy of science and prompted me to read other works on science, but more importantly, on pure philosophy.

The last book I read which enlightened me was Kildare - History & Society. The foreword by John McKenna says outsiders often dismiss [Kildare] as a place lost between two cultures, a region devoid of the sophistication of the east coast and the Irishness of the south and west of the country. Finally someone had put into words something I knew deep down, but could never explain.

I have life of Pi in a pile by my bed, I also have Fear and loathing in Las Vegas and The Tenderness of Wolves and The Pope's Children, all waiting, all looking deliciously interesting. There just aren't enough hourse in the day sometimes.Carl Sagan, isn't he Kirsten Dunst's Godfather? How do I know that? Why would I even think?I don't mean to pry PS-I am nosy- but what religion were you trying to extract yourself from? If you don't wish to answer that's okay too.

Hello Butterfly, Shebah rather likes him a lot. I have The Unconsoled here, but I never got into it. Perhaps I should try again. Certainly I loved the movie Remains of the Day, masterful in its understatement.

I'm not sure if it was subliminally embedded in my head from these comments earlier or what, but this evening I bought The Shadow of the Wind. I just thought it looked good, and behold, when I got home, I saw it had been mentioned here today.

I suppose it's rather rude of me to comment and not say "hello"!I enjoy reading your blog and have been a lurker for sometime...thanks for making me chuckle many a time! Just finished reading Birdsong. Classic book. xx

I've read it Kav, and I've lived in BCN, it shouldn't matter but it is enjoyable knowing where the author is yapping on about. It's a lovely book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Butterfly, welcome aboard. Harrooo. Right, off to watch Scrubs and do serious damage to some ice cold Vodka I've been saving.

"Jude the Obscure," by Thomas Hardy.... That part about "Done because we are too menny" had me bawling and sick to my stomach for days when I re-read it recently. Funny, because when I originally read it back when I was 14, it didn't really get to me. I guess maybe being a parent has changed me.

A few books that changed my life, probably especially because I read them at a young impressionable age.... "Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her," by Susan Griffin, "Always Coming Home," by Ursula K. Le Guin, "Of Human Bondage," by W. Somerset Maugham, the "Upanishads," and the "Bhagavad Gita."

When I was a kid, I loved (and still do) the "Little House" series or books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (which were ghost-written by her daughter). Do not mention the TV series to me, or I will punch you in the head. The books are nothing like the saccharine TV series.

I'm rather against being punched in the head Fat birdie, so I shall keep any observations strictly to my self.Caro, that's quite all right. I won't send anyone looking for you with crushed up rosehips to sprinkle down the back of your jumper at all.

Yeah. I always thought the running theme was society's apathy - he could do almost anything and not get noticed for it. But the end of the film implies that it was all in his head and that he imagined all these sick acts, but was outwardly just a normal yuppie.

recently I was (again) moved by The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery. Then "Anna In In the Tombs of the World" is a brilliant story based on the Sumerian myth of Inanna. I heard about "We need to talk about Kevin" and saw it in Vibes and Scribes - now I may buy it and read it on my holidays. At the bottom of my blog page, you can find an impressive list of books people deem worth reading. It is worth looking at.

About Me

I'm a bouncy, opinionated, messy haired marathon running (!) bibliophile. I wear high heels and have delightful ankles. I'm a devoted drinker. I want a French Bulldog puppy whom I shall call Batman and dress in capes on occasion.
I would also like a pug, whom I shall name Mister Woo. He can remain capeless, but I will make sure he wears a diamante collar at all times.
Both dogs will submit to repeated snorgling and high pitched squeals that only a dolphin would normally tolerate.
I hate Reiki/psychics/mystics/frauds with all my liver. Also, I'm firmly against Jazz and poetry/poems/pomes/ peoms or any of that stuff. I believe in the healing power of ginger.